Review of A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014) by D-Rock W — 19 Jan 2015

This is a pretty good movie that sees Liam Neeson playing, essentially, the same role that he has since Taken, but with a character that's a little bit more compelling than he's done lately. Then again he did The Grey, which was different enough, and very underrated film at that.

But this movie, while almost really good, doesn't really transcend its genre cliches and even Neeson's cliches since Taken. You almost forget how good Neeson actually is sometimes because he's done all these action movies for over half a decade now, seemingly, nonstop.

I don't think this movie, while giving him a little more depth than normal to work with, really gives him that much more to work with. I don't think the character, in my opinion, isn't that emotionally invested in the murders he's investigating.

He befriends a young teen orphan by the name of TJ, whom he takes on as an unofficial associate, but TJ never really finds himself in any real enough danger to where Matthew would really want to hunt down those who wronged him.

He got paid to do a job and that's what he did, for the most part. I suppose you could tie his motivations to help save Lucia, a Russian drug dealer's young daughter, to what happened in his past that made him quit alcohol in the first place.

But they don't do a great job at that to be honest. I think that's the problem I have with detective films/series in general. For the most part, unless it's happening to the main detective himself or someone he/she cares about, it's typically a job for them.

That's not really my type of thing to be honest. I think this film does a better job than most others, because they wouldn't even bother tying up the kidnapping to a past event in the character's life, but it's not like it's great or anything.

But I still liked the movie quite a bit. I enjoyed how it was structured and how it had a darker and more serious tone than you would normally see in this type of movie. I realize that sounds odd, since these films usually deal with murder, kidnapping, and/or rape, all dark subject matters, but there's something about this one.

The cinematography gives it that dark, grimy, New York feel. Not saying that all of New York is like this, of course, just where it's set. So this captures that tone perfectly. It's also got a solid cast, nothing out of this world, but good enough to where you buy into everybody's motivations and reasoning behind their actions.

The villains, however, outside of the money, don't have any real motivation behind their actions. Sometimes it's like that, people just do things because they want to, but it's not supposed to be like that, particularly with the way the characters are presented.

I think the money is just a cheap motivation. It just takes very little effort as opposed to actually figuring out a reason for why they would do this. It's the easy way out, if you ask me. I digress though, this movie could've been better, but it's still a solid enough thriller.

It might not give fans of Neeson's recent work a lot to bite into, in terms of action, but it's a good movie and I can never complain about that.